Epilogue
by Catherine Spark
Summary: A one-off update from House himself, concerning what happened after Wilson died, and where he is in life now.


So apparently you're all clamouring to hear what happened to me when Wilson died. Did I change his sheets, feed him soup, scrub his balls and wipe the crap off his ass in the days leading up to it? Do you want to know what his last words were? What his last meal was? Where we both were at the time? Did I hold his hand? Did my lip quiver as he slipped away? Did I cry prostrate over his lifeless body afterwards? Well, I'm not going to tell you. And if you don't know why I'm not going to tell you, I'm not going to tell you that either – deal with it.

No, I did not go to pieces. When a person's dead they're dead. Feel things when they're living – what's left of them after that doesn't care. I made the call to the undertaker's. Then to the family. Then to the hospital to let Foreman and others know. Then to the police to turn myself in. There wasn't much else to do, and I figured I might as well be in as out – either option held about as much for me as each other. At least inside I didn't have to organize my life.

In prison I kept myself to myself mostly. Limped two hundred and sixty thousand times round the courtyard. Joined the chapel just to mess with my own head. Read the complete works of Virginia Woolf, the Bronte sisters and Charles Dickens, among other stuff. Which is why I missed what was going on meanwhile on the outside. How could I forget life isn't as simple as keeping one's self to one's self? Even when one non-presents as dead, apparently.

One morning after breakfast I was taken into a side room by the small, female Asian officer with undiagnosed intermittent MSUD. She informed me that somebody had made a film, and that I was to watch it. Location: one of the hospital's teaching rooms. One by one several doctors, all now renowned in their fields, explained how my diagnostics seminar had shaped the doctors they were to become. There was the consciously incompetent idiot – now specializing in muscle injuries. Then there was the unconsciously incompetent idiot, who went on to research blood cancer. And the one I knew I wouldn't like, now an army field doctor.

The camera then cut to the audience, all of whom I recognized as former patients. Each stood up in turn, and explained how they owed their lives to me. And then my team – the original team – Chase, Cameron, Foreman and Cuddy – gave moving accounts of how I had shaped them as people, inside and out of the hospital.

"Very touching," I remarked. "No conscientious doctor could be dry-eyed after that tribute."

"Do you know why this video was made?"

I waited.

"It was made because there's been a campaign to have you released. A successful one, as well. Mainly because there's a growing uproar the longer they try to resist it."

I didn't know what to say. I pressed my cane to my forehead – stimulation of the vagus nerve helps me think and blocks out distractions like painful legs or painful feelings. I found that out after I ran out of Vicodin.

"You're not getting off free," continued the officer. "They plan is to defer your sentence, on the condition that you never practice medicine again in a hospital, as a researcher, as a pharmacist or as a general practitioner."

I nodded my understanding. Strangely, I could live with that. I was tired of hospitals – of sickness – of institutions. Perhaps Wilson's illness had consumed that part of me – as a maggot consumes a lump of decaying flesh, saving what's left of a limb.

"You're also being considered for the presidential medal of freedom – for your contribution to medicine, and for outstanding services to the American people."

This took a moment to penetrate through the apathetic fog that – habitually more than anything else – can often surround my brain. But when it did, I shook my head, first in bafflement, then in resistance. "I hurt a lot of people."

"The nomination wasn't my call."

"No." I stood up and leant on my cane, ready to leave. She opened her mouth, but I beat her to it: "Send them a message from me. Tell them that if they give it to me, I'll take it, but the first thing I will do after that is go to the Golden Gates Bridge and throw it off the side. It's their call." I held her gaze. She held mine.

And so, here I am. Barely four blocks from the hospital in which I used to work. I found a way round the medicine prohibition – I work from home as a consulting diagnostician. The doors are open to any floundering doctor – student, resident, whatever – but if you're boring or annoying you can bet your hygienic, wipe-down crocs you'll be out of here faster than a swarm of bacteria fleeing a lump of penicillin. I warn people that my judgement may not be perfect, and it's their responsibility to make the call, but my methods are sound, and they can take what I say or leave it. It doesn't matter to me any more – I can't be responsible for everyone. Because of this I can take methadone if I need it, so no more pain and no more cane, for now at least. Still doesn't feel like me, but maybe that's ok.

Cuddy comes over sometimes. It's funny – you'd almost think I never drove a car through her house. Foreman less, being the Dean of medicine. Thirteen, once or twice a year. Chase and Cameron, never, though I got Christmas cards from both of them. You see, I've realised four things. First, I can't choose who I am. Secondly, I can't be something I'm not. People will always have to work around that. Anyway it's not like I try and force anyone else to be someone_ they're_ not. Thirdly, the world is full of idiots – nothing can change that either. If it weren't we wouldn't need so many doctors to deal with the fallout. Like pain, idiots are a side effect of life. And finally, however inexplicably, whatever I may or may not feel for other people, however much I may try and throw them off, whether I want it or understand it or not, and however misguided the reasons, I seem to be persistently loved. Not my fault, and not my problem. If it keeps them happy then what they feel is up to them. I don't suppose the consequences will do me any lasting harm. Maybe, just maybe, one day… Either way, I'm done fighting this stuff. So in a sense, maybe I am kind of dead – the old me, anyway. I didn't realise before how much of my brain the fighting occupied. And now I wonder what will come in to fill up all of that free space. Time alone will tell.


End file.
